2 Fires and 3 Psychics.

4 min readFeb 11, 2025

Our trash can melted. Of course it was 1400 degrees. Next to the can was a bottle of wine. Empty, but intact. My husband (who, for some reason, I call Mr G) and I were talking with firefighters (cute, of course, they aways are) who were putting out spot fires in our neighborhood. Or what had been our neighborhood. Some homes had seemly melted, much like our trash can. I said “That was our last bottle of wine, we’re doing Dry January.” They said…we are too. What? This January? When the fires were hotter than Satan’s butt? They said “Working back to back 24 hour a day shifts you don’t have time to drink.” 24 hour a day shifts, back to back.

I packed when we got the evacuation warning. Packed the same stuff I’d packed four weeks before for the last evacuation. Packing is a mad dash for passports and baby books. You never know what to grab. But I had just had a (literal) fire drill a month ago for the Franklin Fire. My daughter-in-law still finds it amusing that I evacuated (twice) with a leather skirt.

When we got the LEAVE NOW we didn’t. We stayed on PCH long enough to see flames a block away. This was about 10pm. And the cops were screaming at us to go.

We went to a hotel, turned on the TV and cried. Around midnight my friend Psychic Natalie called me. I answered, because who doesn’t answer when a psychic calls in the middle of the night (in the middle of a hell fire). She said “sometimes it skips a house”.

It skipped our house. Why? How? I prayed, but I believe everyone in LA prayed that night. In the morning TV crews were on our street. My former co-host from Good Day LA (one time frenemy, now BFF) called me. Jillian was screaming …your house is safe.

But there’s no going home. We’ve moved 5 times with 4 people (and 2 dogs that think they’re people). There was the hotel (fire was close so they turned off the electricity) two Air B & Bs (one was too close to the fires). Then a friend’s home. They call their home Air D & D (Dorothy & David) because we’ve evacuated there before. Then we found a rental. We couldn’t go home. But we have a home. 10,000 homes burned. Over 600 in Malibu.

You may think Malibu is all Nobu and IG. But it’s really Mayberry. A small town with lots of paparazzi in the summer. Three of my neighbors had just moved in. Two had to put their dogs down a few days before the fires. I still mourn my dog after 5 years. One neighbor was out of town and begged me to break a window to get her cat.

It’s layers upon layers, upon layers of grief.

BF (before fires) a friend hired a psychic for her Christmas party. I so wanted that free reading. And the first thing the psychic said was…you’re going to have a challenging year. For New Year’s we were in Palm Springs. I had lunch with my old friend Char the Psychic. First thing she said…sell your house! And yet another psychic friend (I’m like the psychic friends network) reads homes instead of humans. She told me long ago my home was named Gayle. She said Gayle loved our family. And apparently Gayle is a bad ass.

If you’re counting…that’s 4 psychics. You must think I’m nuts. I think I’m nuts.

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But back to my challenging year. When we got around to getting our mail. I had a letter from Tower Imagining that said they saw something on my left breast. The letter had been lost for 2 weeks. It’s not like time is of the essence in these things. Trying not to vomit, I went for the (much delayed) diagnostic sonogram and mammogram.

I sat in that ugly gown and waited for my results. Mr G, the only man in the lobby, also waited. I had been in that hospital many times with my mom. As I said a prayer the lights flickered in the room. I knew it was mom, or Jesus, or both.

When they told me I was fine, I hugged the radiologist (is that inappropriate) and burst into tears (again). Mid mammogram the radiologist asked me if my date of birth was correct. I said yes. She said well, what the hell do you do?

It was my first laugh in way too long. I told her all my beauty secrets (none of which are secret if you follow me on IG).

I’m sure my skin looks better because I did (the longest) Dry January. But it’s February. We did buy another (& another) bottle of wine. And I hope the cute firefighters are relaxing with a cold beer.

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